


A Very Ordinary Telepathy

by lindenwaverly



Series: For I was once your shield, and you were once my sword. [1]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Cherik - Freeform, Fluff, M/M, Sad sad sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 16:06:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindenwaverly/pseuds/lindenwaverly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He keeps the good chess set in the exact same arrangement. Of course, he locks it in the cupboard. And tells Hank not to give him the key. But he hasn't moved any of the pieces, because he likes to be reminded that he was nearly about to win before Erik left. And just in case.</p><p>Post-Movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Ordinary Telepathy

He keeps the good chess set in the exact same arrangement. Of course, he locks it in the cupboard. And tells Hank not to give him the key. But he hasn’t moved any of the pieces, because he likes to be reminded that he was nearly about to win before Erik left. And just in case.  
He gives his room to a new mutant. He has to. His things are already gone, stolen away in the night by Azazel, he guesses. Raven’s stuff was left just as it was, and he kept it all in place until one day he walked in and found Hank sitting there with his head in his hands.  
And if, when he’s in Cerebro, he occasionally finds himself seeking out a familiar bitterness, an emptiness so heavy that whenever he brushed against it he’d have to stop for breath, he tells himself that finding Magneto’s location is a perfectly sensible idea, that he can’t keep that stupid helmet on at all times. He never finds it. He tells himself that he just has to focus more.  
Sometimes, when one of the younger mutants asks him if he ever wishes he didn't understand people’s thoughts so clearly, he remembers standing in the plane, just before the final battle on the beach. He remembers the gunmetal eyes that were suddenly so unguarded, the expression of pure shock on Erik’s face. Of course he knew exactly what Erik was thinking, but he thinks that Erik might have known what he was thinking too, and that maybe there’s another kind of telepathy, a very ordinary, human one.  
Sean can’t remember which is the knight and which is the bishop. Halfway through their first game he looks like he’s about to cry.  
He doesn't mean to think like this, of course. Hank subtly left several books on the psychology of bereavement and abandonment, and one of the tips was that every time you thought of the dead person, you should immediately remind yourself that they were exactly that – dead – until their name and the idea of death became almost instantly linked and you quickly moved on to the acceptance stage. So that’s what he tries to do. The second he has a memory like that, he tries to bring back the memory of how that coin felt when it went through Shaw’s head. He pats the side of his wheelchair and reminds himself of what happened. He doesn't think of Erik. He thinks of Magneto.  
Hank spends to long thinking about every move in chess, and draws up complex plans and formulas, and still loses every time.  
For every moment where there’s a spot of weakness, there’s an equal moment of blinding anger. Whenever he passes Raven’s room and gets reminded that his baby sister is now his enemy, or when his wheelchair slips and his heart almost stops with terror, he feels so angry at Magneto that he could kill him. He imagines trapping him in the mansion, torturing him with his thoughts. Of course, he cuts those fantasies out, because you’re not meant to have murderous impulses while in charge of a mansion of children. But there’s a moment like that every day. When he sees Hank’s face after one of the kids make’s a cruel joke, and knows how much he needs Raven. When he sees a picture of them when they first set up the project, before Shaw arrived and took Angel and Darwin, and wonders how Erik could throw his lot in with people like that. When he remembers that sudden feeling of abandonment when the comforting buzz of Erik’s thoughts was cut off by the helmet, or tries to turn to Erik to tell him something and finds Sean there instead, or realizes how much he relied on him to help his ideas take shape properly.  
So his feelings balance out, really, which makes the occasional evening sitting in the sunset glow and scanning the gates for a lanky figure perfectly understandable. And he doesn't need the good chess-set anyway, not now Alex is teaching him poker.


End file.
